ed carelessness. "I'm getting rather bored with this wild seaside
watering place and its glitter of ocean and hopeless background of
mountain. It's nothing to me that 'there's no land nearer than Japan'
out there. It may be very healthful to the tissues, but it's weariness
to the spirit, and I don't see why we can't wait at San Francisco till
the rains send us further south, as well as here."

He had walked to the balcony of their sitting-room in the little seaside
hotel where this conversation took place, and gazed discontentedly over
the curving bay and sandy shore before him. After a slight pause Mrs.
Ashwood stepped out beside him.

"Very likely I may go with you," she said, with a perceptible tone of
weariness. "We will see after the post arrives."

"By the way, there is a little package for you in my room, that came
this morning. I brought it up, but forgot to give it to you. You'll find
it on my table."

Mrs. Ashwood abstractedly turned away and entered her brother's room
from the same balcony. The forgotten parcel, which looked like a roll
of manuscript, was lying on his dressing-table. She gazed attentively at
the handwriting on the wrapper and then gave a quick glance around her.
A sudden and subtle change came over her. She neither flushed nor paled,
nor did the delicate lines of expression in her face quiver or change.
But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergo
some exquisite suffusion. As the medicines which the Arabian physician
had concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languid
royal blood of Persia, so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flow
in upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform her
weary spirit.

"Jack!" she called, in a high clear voice. But Jack had already gone
from the balcony when she reached it with an elastic step and a quick
youthful swirl and rustling of her skirt. He was lighting his cigar in
the garden.

"Jack," she said, leaning half over the railing, "come back here in an
hour and we'll talk over that matter of yours again."

Jack looked up eagerly and as if he might even come up then, but she
added quickly, "In about an hour--I must think it over," and withdrew.

She re-entered the sitting-room, shut the door carefully and locked it,
half pulled down the blind, walking once or twice around the table on
which the parcel lay, with one eye on it like a graceful cat. Then she
suddenly sat down, took it u